Historic Homes Workshop Tampa

This past weekend the Husband, Little Man and I hiked across the State heading west to attend Tampa Preservation's "Historic Homes Workshop."

This year's workshop theme was "Maintaining your historic home" with a wealth of classes on exterior details such as landscaping, roofind issues, creating maintenance plans and budgets, window restoration, and more. Go here for the complete list of offered classes! 

 

The husband and I played "Divide and Conquer" so we could attend as many classes as possible and compare notes. We learned more about roof issues, roofing materials and the structure of a roof, how plan and how to budget for a larger project, more about the exterior details of historic homes, and more about paint and primers and paint issues. 

 

The atmosphere was friendly and welcoming, and being in the company of other lovers of historic homes always feels special.Being one of the few "out-of-towners" didn't feel weird at all!

For lunch we checked in with "Foodspotting" and decided to try "The Bungalow" in keeping with the day's theme. This restaurant was located in a beautiful Craftsman style Bungalow right around the corner from the workshop, and had very pretty outdoor seating in a lush, tropical front yard.

It was SO worth it, and frankly, I can't wait until next year's workshop! This is definitely going to be a staple on our event schedule. I have more pictures of a certain class held in at a very interesting place right across the street from the main 'campus' but blogspot and/or my computer aren't very cooperative this morning, so I'll fill you in on this later!

Trying It On For Size

Back into the kitchen for a quick peek:

The other day, on a trip to the orange box, I was browsing the tile selection checking out possible options for a backsplash tile that would meet our odd requirement of being less than average tile thickness to work with the reduced relief of our window trim (I shared my backsplash blues with you here) when I was approached by a helpful employee.

I explained my dilemma to him, told him I'd looked at a few glass chip tiles, and after some nodding and chin rubbing, he suggested I looked at those new ekbinnovation stick'n peel tiles they just added to their inventory.

Stick'n peel? Gaaaah ...I had to suppress an involuntary shudder at the sound of that (there are some gel stick'n peel tiles on the market that are touted as the quick cheap fix). He was clearly amused by my reluctance but suggested I gave them a quick look after all.

I'm glad I did!

They had two different types on display: stainless steel tiles (no need for grout) and clear glass tiles (need to be grouted). No cheap gel! And I actually liked the glass mosaic tile quite a bit, so I brought one sheet home.

They are sold just like mosaic tiles in 12x12 inch sheets and cost around $10/sheet. They are mounted to a sticky backing which eliminates the need for thinset which would save us a few precious millimeters in the installation.

 

We lined it up with the window to see how it would fit , and this could actually work!

I like the crisp white backdrop and the glossy glass finish. On top of that, glass is easy to clean and to keep clean, and I wouldn't have to worry about using a cleaner that ruins the mother of pearl finish/marble/natural stone of the backsplash. No stainless steel backsplash for us though - while it looks stunning in other kitchens and we do have all stainless steel appliances, we feel it clashes with the warm wood tones of our butcher block counter tops.

Not bad, not bad at all. We are not quite ready to pull the trigger yet (mainly because my head is all wrapped up in blue paint chips and paint decks right now) but this is a very strong contender.

Have you tried a stick'n peel product and really liked it? Would you try a peel'n stick tile? Thoughts? Comments? Buehler?

The Best Laid Plans Of Men And Mice

No, we don't have a pest problem.
No exterminator needed, thank you very much.

I wrote about some exterior color scheme musings way back in November last year (read about it here). I have not written about how we painted our back porch several different shades of sage green and blue-green, and how, after eliminating colors along the way as too light, too green, too dark, too blue, we ended up with the back porch mostly painted in Valspar's "Sea Port."

I even liked "Sea Port" combined with a creamy light ocher trim color (because the husband kept talking about 'yellow trim').

All was well until ....
....until the husband declared that "Yeah, that color doesn't do anything for me. Really."
Wait a second ... Whaaaat?
The husband amended his first statement with "Well, I don't hate it."

Yeah, little did he know that that statement wasn't making things any better. Turns out that the husband has his heart sort of set on a blue house. With yellow trim. He even found one house in our neighborhood with that color scheme.

It's ugly (the color scheme, not the house).

I firmly vetoed the yellow trim part, especially after showing him hundreds of pictures of blue houses, all of which sport crisp white trim, but trying to be a good wife I agreed to trying on blue for size, even though I never liked it for our house on the Sherwin-Williams' Color Visualizer.

The things you do for your husband ...
So for the past week I've sequestered myself with paint fans and chips and samples trying to find a blue we both like and that looks good on our house.

So far, there are Sherwin-Williams "Tempe Star" and "Refuge", Valspar's "Bungalow Blue", "Magnet Dapple", "Prussian Cadet", and "Granite", and Benjamin Moore's "Hale Navy" and "Narragansett Green."

Turns out the light plays a real number on how you experience any of these colors.

I wish somebody would just tell me what color to paint my house ...

Eureka!

Eureka may refer to:

• Eureka (word), a famous exclamation attributed to Archimedes
• Eureka effect, the sudden, unexpected realization of the solution to a problem

In this case it refers to the happy excitement I felt upon finding my camera.

Yes, I 'lost' my camera.

With all the room and project hopping I lost track of where I'd put it completely and it's taken me _days_ to figure out where I last had it and where I might have put it.

Fortunately, I managed to track it down (cue 'big sigh of relief' here) and now we're back in business! I should have another project update for you later today!

Coming Clean!

Taking a shower is such a modern convenience it's hard to imagine a time when all you did was wash up and every once in a while take a bath. Living in an older house you are, however, reminded of this time. Clawfoot tubs are great for taking a hot bath, especially the cast iron tubs that stay hot forever as soon as the water has heated up the cast iron. That taking an actual shower came as an after thought you can easily tell by the awkward curtain rigs and contraptions holding a handheld shower up or extensions to create a shower 'spout' -they are not the prettiest things to look at, especially if the tub is somewhat freestanding (it's not quite to out of place if the tub is tucked into a corner).

When we turned the upstair's kitchen into our master bath one of the must-haves was a clawfoot tub - you clearly can't have a historic home without one! - and we scored an amazing deal on a beautiful acrylic tub with gorgeous chrome feet (more about that here).
All the looks but none of the weight!

Except, no way to shower. After much hemming and hawing we finally discovered the Kvartal curtain track system at IKEA and decided that that might be the best "out of the way/sight" option to add some shower curtains to our bath tub.

The KVARTAL system offers two attachment options: wall-mounted and ceiling mounted. We bought all the pieces to create a 5'x 3.5' large rectangular track system to hang right above our tub. Little Man and husband had a great time putting it together!

We decided for a set-up that is much wider than our tub because after installing the curved shower rod in our hall bathroom we had learned to appreciate the extra elbow space.

No more cold shower curtains sticking to your wet skin!

You definitely need two people to hang the curtain track from the ceiling (one holding, the other marking and drilling and screwing) but in the end the whole project was rather straightforward and simple.

And we now have shower curtains! I picked these up at Wally World months ago because the color scheme matches the ongoing theme in bedroom, dressing room and bath room just perfectly. It really picks up on the seaglass colored ceiling and ties it all together.

I hope they are still selling them because while I bought two, having another one for more overlap would be even better.

[Binky photobombing]

My "Three of Three" for our master bathroom are coming along nicely:

1. Update ceiling light
2. Install shower curtain
3. Create shelving in closet

Now all that's left to do is tackle the closet, frame out a separation and install shelves and I get to check off this room! Woot!

I took me three rooms to notice a certain ...ahem, trend, though: As you can see, the third project on each room's list so far has been the one that is the most involved and will take the longest.So in order to keep this blog hopping, I'll have to continue my room hopping as well.

Let the madness continue!

Let There Be Light!

The husband is switching positions within the company, and thought it would be a good time to take a few days off between taking off one hat and putting on another.

I was being a good wife and did not prepare a "honey-do" list for him but instead let him enjoy sleeping in, a cup of coffee with the morning paper and all the oodling about he could possibly squeeze into the day while I was at work and Little Man at school.
Yes, it was hard.
Yes, I was twitching on the inside biting back 'helpful suggestions' regarding things I'd like to see done that week.
Man, it was hard!

On the other hand, it was all the more rewarding to come home from work to discover he had tackled a project while I wasn't supervising and ...ahem, delegating!

It's a ceiling light! In the master bathroom! I'd picked up another ALÄNG ceiling light fixture at IKEA during my weekend in Tampa a few weeks ago. We liked the look of the smaller fixture we installed in the dressing room so much and thought it would also go beautifully with the texture of our vanity light shades that we decided to replace the shiny brass nipple fixture in our master bath with the larger version (since the bathroom is also much larger; it's a whopping ~12'x13').

So, because Super-Husband installed it as a surprise, there are no 'Before' pictures - no biggie, nobody really needs to see the brassy nipple fixture that wasn't doing anything for our bathroom in regard to light or looks - only 'After'. It's so much prettier and so much brighter now, and we have a more cohesive look between the dressing room and the adjoining bathroom now.

And I didn't have to nag once!
Awesome!

Three of Three: Master Bathroom Madness

Well, we're still stewing on our back splash for the kitchen, and covering up the utilities in the laundry room has begun, but in order to keep this blog going with more than one post per week and even more so to keep the current momentum (you never know when that'll fizzle out), we're pressing on here at the Little Old House!

After tackling (or starting on) two rooms downstairs, it's about time we make a big jump and hop on upstairs! On my trip to Tampa a few weeks ago I managed to sneak in some quality time at IKEA and picked up a few things for the house. Since one of those things was something for our Master bathroom, what better room to choose that one next?

So, here we go!

Our upstair's master bathroom began life at closing as the upstair's kitchen of our duplex. Then we tore into it, ripped everything out and have been putting it back together ever since.

Miraculously it went from this ...

 ....to this

It's come a really long way. Since this last picture we have also finally added a vanity light fixture

and we also changed the wall color from just bright white to a pale beige for some much needed warmth. Our master bath is -huge- and we felt the bright white walls which looks so pretty in other bathrooms made our bathroom feel just like a cold, empty, open aircraft hangar. The very light, but warmer color on the walls makes the trim and tile pop and adds much needed warmth to our bath room, making it feel cozy and comfortable.

Of course, there are still things I would like to add to it, and change about it. From the long list of projects and flourishes I picked the following projects for my "Three of Three" list:

1. replace ceiling light
2. install a shower rig and curtain
3. set up the linen closet with shelves

Let the madness begin!